UA History 101

Agroup of community organizations is inviting residents to brush up on their Upper Arlington history.

Adventure UA is a new endeavor organized by the city, the Upper Arlington Public Library and Upper Arlington City Schools, along with Leadership UA, the Upper Arlington Historical Society, the Upper Arlington Senior Center, the Upper Arlington Education Foundation and the Upper Arlington Alumni Association.

Modeled after the TV show The Amazing Race, Adventure UA is a six-week program that will allow teams to earn points by researching UA’s past and present, and completing community-centered challenges. It begins Sept. 12 and finishes up Oct. 23.

“The goal of the program is to have people learn about their community (and) learn the history of Upper Arlington, as well as just have fun,” says Danna Armstrong, Miller Park Library branch manager and a member of the program’s organizing committee.

Teams can have two to six members, and there is no cost to register. Each set of challenges – a research-based challenge and an activity-based challenge – will be posted on a Monday, and each team has until the end of the following Sunday to solve them.

Points are awarded for successful completion of challenges, and at the end of the six-week challenge, the team with the most points wins a prize. In addition, each team that completes one of the weekly clues is entered in a weekly prize drawing for gift cards.

Patrons will need to make use of the library and other community resources to look up historical information that will aid them in their searches. Clues will cover a lot of ground, Armstrong says – they may be as simple as looking up information in the UA Archives online at www.uaarchives.org, but others will re quire more active adventuring.

“It might be (to) take your picture in front of a historic monument that was built in 1846,” says Armstrong.

Efforts will be made to keep the challenges as inclusive as possible, Armstrong says.

“The UA archives is something we’re really going to immerse people in for the research elements of this program,” says Jennifer Faure, adult program coordinator for the Tremont branch.

The research process has already given event organizers a primer on local history.

“We’ve learned so much about the different purposes of Miller Park and all the different reasons why the parks were named and who they were named after,” says Armstrong. “All the things that this community has to offer, you do not realize until you delve into its history.”

A brief preview challenge to promote the larger competition took place at the Chamber’s Taste of UA event Aug. 11. Patrons could answer trivia questions about the history of the school district, or follow a series of clues from booth to booth to learn about the history of UA institutions like Huffman’s Market, the Tremont Goodie Shop and the library itself.

The preview challenge grabbed the attention of many attendees, some of whom were inspired to volunteer their own memories of Upper Arlington, says Faure.

More information on the program can be found on the library’s website, www. ualibrary.org.

Garth Bishop is a contributing editor. Feedback and comments welcome at gmartineau@pubgroupltd.com.

Devan Toncler